Officials in Roman Carthage(Tunisia) provide the first records of the advance of Christianity this far West into North Africa when they write a report on the executions of six city residents who were discovered to be Christians. (pic: ancient Roman mosaic shows Christian martyrs bound to posts being wheeled to an arena to be attacked by leopards)
A ship of the East Indian Trading Company the Doddington is wrecked off an island in Algoa Bay in what will become South Africa. Only 23 of 270 passengers and crew survive. Marooned on the island, they will build a ship in seven months, and use it to sail onward to India.
The forces of Omar Saidou Tall, Sultan of the Toucouleur Empire (Guinea, Mali and Senegal), is nearing victory with his siege of France's Fort Medina, which has been built on his territory. Tall is alarmed by France's colonial expansion in West Africa. However, heavy rains raise the Senegal River, and allow the French warship Basilic to bring relief to the fort. The ship will arrive with reinforcements and supplies on 18 July, and engage the Toucouleur army until Tall’s soldiers are forced to retreat. France will not conquer the Toucouleur until the 1890s. When they do, they will steal Tall’s sword and sabre as revenge. France will not return these to Senegal in November, 2019.
U.S. Civil Rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois publishes his first book on Africa, Africa, Its Geography, People and Products, which will be followed later in the year by Africa: Its Place in Modern History. In 1946, he will publish The World and Africa, and in 1947 its sequel The World and Africa, an Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History. In 1960, the year he will move to Ghana, he will publish his final book in the series, Africa in the Battle Against Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism.
South Africa’s Suppression of Communism Act goes into effect. The law will be used by the government to arrest any activist protesting racist apartheid laws by defining “Communism” not as a political ideology but as any advocacy of economic, social or political change “by the promotion of disturbance or disorder" or which fosters "feelings of hostility between the European and the non-European races.”
The Bantu Authorities Act goes into effect in South Africa as one of the pillars of apartheid. The law calls for all black South Africans to be stripped of their citizenship, and reserving South African citizenship only to the white minority population. Black South Africans are to become “citizens” of manufactured “countries” called Bantustans (homelands).
Digging at Tanganyika’s Olduvai Gorge, paleontologist Mary Leaky finds two ancient teeth emerging from the rock. She rushes home to where her husband and co-digger Richard Leaky is in bed with the flu, brings him to the spot, and they uncover a 1.8million-year-old fossil they call Zinj. The distant relative of modern humans, the “priceless discovery” proves “the remains of the earliest man ever found.”
South African singer Miriam Makeba, the first African entertainer to achieve international stardom, becomes the template for future generations of celebrity activists when she testifies before the U.N. Special Committee Against Apartheid. South African authorities will respond to her call for a boycott of the country as a means to end apartheid atrocities by banning her music.
Unable to outrun human predators and the destruction of their hunting grounds by human population growth, the world's fastest land animal, Africa's cheetah, is becoming endangered. Numbering 100,000 a century ago, only about 7,000 now remain in the wild.
Zimbabwean physician, in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. He was Zimbabwe’s first trained medical doctor. He founded the Mashonaland Herbalists Association, the first African organisation for traditional healers. Joining politics, he became Vice-Chairman of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZANU), and was one of Southern Africa’s most prominent nationalists and independence advocates. He was killed – likely assassinated – in 1962.
South African psychoanalyst and neuropsychiatrist, in Lüderitz, South West Africa. He discovered the process humans use to dream, locating in the forebrain the mechanisms that enable dreaming. Pioneering the use of psychoanalytic methods in neuroscience, he invented the term neuropsychoanalysis.
first Ugandan to win an Olympics medal when he took bronze in the Men’s 400 metres at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. He was the first Ugandan to win a world championship medal when he took silver in the Men’s 400 metres at the 1997 Athens World Championships.
